Summary

This is the last part of my American Book. Or should I say about the end of "My American Dream" journey? It's almost three years later. I didn't die. Or maybe I did. Something died in me. Maybe I finally accepted what I knew before -- the total solitude. No exceptions. Period. Not even for me. No miracle even for the one who understood the new world of single beings, formerly known as human beings.
This is why we wait for aliens, bad or good, we have a better chance to meet ET than another human. And this planet which I feel no more moves in the empty darkness -- where? I don't know, I am just a stone, an atom thrown into the Open Space to see what is out there. The next book is about it -- Self. And unlike the American Book, the Book of Self has no chronology -- what one could expect after the end of times?

Questions

Baudrillard: "if we hope to understand anything we will need to get beyond Good and Evil" ("L'Esprit" 15).

2000

2005: Everything must have an end. I ended this book at the year of 2000, when my American life ended...

Oh, that cursed year! Maybe the world escaped the end, not me. How didn't I know it was coming? Didn't I see it?

I had some thoughts about why my family life fell apart; serious and stupid ideas. My new American life ended on the first day of Christmas...

Yes, there were several months of agony.

It's cold and dark in December. It was very cold and dark in December of 2000. There was no light at all. At least I didn't see any light. "It will get only worse from now on," I thought. "Much worse."

It did.

It was getting worse with every day, every hour, every minute.

...Didn't I know what kind of world I was born in? You, math and physics wonder kid, you should know the speed the earth spins and torates, you must remember the volocities of the open space, the madness of atoms and electrons... It's only on the surface we see the old forms, it's an illusion that man and woman could be in love, but everything inside and out of moves with the metabolical speeds...

I turned back because the lights came from behind and saw the car getting at mee. And the last second before my face hit the widshield I recognize her face with the empty eyes I didn't recognize...

Maybe all marriages do end in some very ordinary way, but that is why I took it so bad. I didn't think we have an ordinary family. But maybe it became one and why would I like it to continue then?

Because I thought that she goes through her own stage of changes and will come back being closer to me. Regarless of the notion that that in Russia family roles are "traditional," I came from the world where all women I knew worked -- and I see nothing wrong in it. The Latin proverb said -- to work is to pray -- and I a worker in workers paradise called "America."

We both wanted her to stay home with the children, and again I saw it very normal. As normal as her working when both of them were in middle school. I didn't understand why she didn't want to finish the draduate school, but it's me, who wouldn't mind going back to school even now, if I would have an extra time. I saw nothing wrong working for McDonald's and I was the one who sent her to that interview and typed the resume. I still nothing wrong with working and with business. I accepted long ago that I have to work for living. I accepted it like I accepted my hight or age. There are things that I accepted because I do not have the time to fight or to reflect on it. I was born a slave in the times of slavery and I do not think that I can a free man. I do not know what they mean by a retirement. Whould it better to have an estate like most of the artists of the past and not to worry about the living? I can't think about it, because I remember the fate of the previous generation of artists during the Stalin's era.

.... Zizek : Love is Evil !

I keep think about the timing, and the change I didn't notice in my relations with Esther that coincides with my Sellassie websites. Yes, I thought that this will bring us closer and take to another stage, because to stay together the two must grow together. The effect was absolutely opposite. I sensed it in Utah with the Templers; she took their knights-theatrics seriously and I saw the fear in her that everybody would know that she is not real, like the rest of the family. I thought that she is different and that was the reason to bring the serious matters back into this royal comedy they have since his death. It is indeed a one step that separates greatness from ridiculous; I didn't write about it -- and this is what is missing in HIM. Maybe she and the rest hiding their name in public because they know that they are real? I didn't mean to expose her, I thought that she is a princess. I do not know why she didn't believe me, but the bigger this Sellassie business was getting, the more pushed it, the further she was from me. To write it right I have to write about the comedy of those games. And this book is the real divorce.

When the children were small, I didn't think much about the past, but then we went to Russia and Ethiopia so they would have some sense what Russian or Ethiopian means -- and this royal stuff came into picture. I think that they are broken by the name, the knowledge that they failed it. That was the zone where I and her weren't man and woman, but two individuals, who had to find the way to each other. Do you know that all brothers and sisters are in "service industry" -- as if they wanted to low it. Now it's six of them there. This mixture of acceptance and denial of the past I couldn't stand.

I do not know how it will go with the children now. I do fight against Alexey and Tafari becoming Alex and Al and my son accepting it as his identity. Why would I write Father-Russia in English(!) is not because I can't let go, the Russian culture that the Soviet lost, but my children! If they won't have that link with the past, I lost them. Their real birth is now. Maybe she was afraid that they go "my way" and she will them like we lost each other?

She wouldn't say it, she doesn't know. She probably will use the ready answers -- that I was too domineering, or too much in control, or left no room for her. I heard it before and it could be seen this way, if not to consider the motives. That I do believe in fate and mission, obligations before God and oneself. That I hadn't been to a movie theatre since mid eighties, because I do not have time even to read the books on my own reading list for decades. That every time we go somewhere I turn it into business, projects, work? That people who want to be with me have to get involved in what I do? That I turn parties intro production meetings or discussions? And they are able to do it with me, I leave or don't go there?

... POV is next to read?

[ video ] * Slavoj Zizek: Why Only an Atheist Can Believe [3/12]

Politics Between Fear and Trembling
Calvin College, Michigan. November 10, 2006
Žižek addresses the complicated relationship between belief, or what we take to be belief, and our desire to see all. The lecture is followed by a brief period of questions and answers.
guide@2000-2003 film-north
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